Students' goal strivings are known to be connected with important outcomes, both academically and with regard to individual well-being. In spite of their importance, our knowledge of factors contributing to their early development is rather limited. In this longitudinal study on school beginners (N = 212), we focused on the interrelationships…

Smartphones are omnipresent and offer real-time information on the go. Predominantly, adolescent girls have been found to be engaged in levels of physical activity (PA) below the daily recommended guideline of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity, and especially during weekends. Lack of sufficient PA can lead to a risk of…

Children's early experiences of educational transition can be a critical step in their life-long learning journey, yet we know very little about their perceptions of this experience. This paper draws on the findings of a participatory study, which identified rules and rewards as being significant factors for children transitioning from an early…

Objective: Mobile health apps hold potential to support and reinforce positive health behaviours, especially among young people with chronic diseases like asthma that require continual self-management. We aimed to gain feedback from adolescents with asthma on two existing asthma self-management apps to guide the development of an evidence- and…

Five participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) between the ages of 10 and 14 years attended a twice-weekly social skills group for 8 weeks. A multiple probe design across skills with concurrent replication across participants was utilized to assess the effects of social skills training using multiple exemplars and lag schedules on social…

Early career academics (ECAs) represent the future of the academic workforce, but competition and career uncertainty is resulting in disengagement and burnout. In professions outside academia, increased engagement is associated with perceived organisational support and fair recognition and rewards, as well as opportunities to meet basic…

Competition-based policy programmes are an external steering mechanism to create beneficial outcomes for societies that are entering the Continental European Higher Education landscape. The Excellence Initiative in Germany aimed to enhance research quality, international visibility and support peak performing universities. We want to study if…

Minnesota's R.E.E.T.A.I.N. (Retaining Early Educators Through Attaining Incentives Now) was created by Child Care Aware (CCA) of Minnesota in 2002 to support the retention of committed and highly qualified early childhood education (ECE) teachers and providers. Child care providers are among some of the lowest paid workers in the in the country;…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate resistance behaviour among academics in an Indonesian institution of higher education. The context was institutional policy change on international peer-review publication, and the objective was to associate resultant resistance behaviour with personality, trust in management, social influence and intrinsic…

School meals play an important role in student well-being. However, studies have given evidence that school meals may not be satisfactory to students. Evidence suggests that taste plays an influential role in students' food decisions and eating experiences. This review of current research finds that studies around improving school meals mainly…

The PhD Plus 10 Study was the first-ever follow-up of mid-career physics PhD recipients. In 2011 individuals who graduated with a physics PhD from the classes of 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2001 in the United States were contacted. Of those who responded to the survey, 597 were employed in academia, 464 academic employees worked in physics or astronomy…

Motor skills represent high-precision movements performed at optimal speed and accuracy. Such motor skills are learned with practice over time. Besides practice, effects of motivation have also been shown to influence speed and accuracy of movements, suggesting that fast movements are performed to maximize gained reward over time as noted in…

Much is known about young children's helping behavior, but little is known about the underlying motivations and emotions involved. In 2 studies we found that 2-year-old children showed positive emotions of similar magnitude--as measured by changes in their postural elevation using depth sensor imaging technology--after they achieved a goal for…

Growing evidence suggests that reward prospect promotes cognitive stability in terms of increased context or cue maintenance. In 3 Experiments, using different versions of the AX-continuous performance task, we investigated whether this reward effect comes at the cost of decreased cognitive flexibility. Experiment 1 shows that the reward induced…

This study aimed to investigate whether special education teachers shared similar difficulties in their understanding of reward and punishment as their mainstream peers. Thirty-five teachers working in six special education needs schools took part in a mixed methods study to explore their use and understanding of reinforcement principles. The…